Blackmail
by dr4g0ngrl
Summary: A very short piece of deaged!cas fluff as a thank you/bribe to everyone who has so kindly enjoyed my work here and, I hope, will enjoy my original novel, too. It is set during a fantasy time in which Cas can still fly and Gabriel is still alive—so totally not canon and not apologetic for it. I've set the rating K , but it does have a couple Supernatural-canon swear words.


**Okay, first I want to give a huge thanks to those who continue to read and respond to my fiction here even though I haven't been active in years. As I've worked on original stories, your comments and responses have often brightened a dark day. I've been absent here because of that original work and I'm proud to announce the release of my debut novel (a YA urban fantasy), **_**Chaos Heir: Beholden**_** by me, A.D. Guzman, on Amazon. See my profile for links to the book and my website adguzmanwrites . com (remove the spaces). As further thanks for your support here and in hopes that if you like my fanfiction, you'll also like my originals, here's a short deaged fanfic in the Supernatural verse set during a fantasy time in which Cas can still fly and Gabriel is still alive—so totally not canon and not apologetic for it. Please enjoy this fic, and please check out my book on Amazon! And you can find me under adguzmanwrites on Facebook or Instagram under ad_guzman_writes if you'd like to contact me or just see the weird things l might post ;-).**

**Disclaimer: Nope. Don't own Supernatural either. **

Lightning rent the sky; thunder rolled in its wake. There hadn't been a storm outside moments ago. Sam and Dean exchanged a worried look and gripped their weapons tighter. Cas had gone ahead to scout the warehouse and failed to return. That and miraculous lightning were not indicators that their angel was well.

Chanting in the distance did not reassure. Witches and rituals were never a good combination. The hall they ran down opened into a scene that had Dean's heart leaping for his throat. It was a typical abandoned warehouse with bare, concrete floor spanning the entire room. The witches had set up in the very center and the concentric, flaming circles told Dean what had detained his friend. It was a trap designed for an angel, even one as wily as Cas.

The largest holy fire circle encompassed the entire room, its flames licking at Dean and Sam's toes. The smallest had left Cas with barely enough room to stretch his arms out. The angel looked as unflappable as always, though he tried to keep all the witches in sight, but Dean could see the glint of fear in those blue eyes. The angel spotted them almost immediately and calmly slid his gaze away to keep from drawing the witches' attention to the hunters.

He seemed unharmed by the chanting until one of the witches pulled out an odd device almost like a flashlight. They pointed it at the angel's chest and turned it on. A flash of green laser light painted the white dress shirt for the briefest instant. Cas touched his chest, visibly confused. Then he hissed and hunched forward in obvious pain. The chanting took on a more triumphant tone. Dean swore inwardly. Oh, hell no! He didn't know what was going on, but he'd be damned if he let them hurt Cas.

As if on cue, Dean and Sam started shooting. It was like fish in a barrel, the witches ironically trapped by their own flames. In minutes they were dead, but whatever they'd done to Cas was still affecting him. Cas was on his knees now, curled in on himself. He wasn't screaming only because he was a badass at holding it in.

Dean backed up and took a running leap over the first ring of fire, then the next until he landed next to Cas. Sam had found a fire extinguisher and had already begun breaking the circles.

Dean rested a hand on the angel's back. "C'mon, Cas. Talk to me. What'd they do to you, buddy?"

He gasped and curled into a smaller ball. "I-I don't know."

"What hurts, man? You don't look injured," Dean tried again, but when he went to touch the angel's shoulder, he had to reach further down and grabbed a lot more coat than angel.

"I don't know!" Cas practically wailed, but it was no longer the gravelly growl of a man, but the high-pitched notes of a very young child.

Just then, Sam extinguished the final circle. His jaw dropped, and Dean felt just as flummoxed as his brother looked.

Cas was tiny. No more than one or two by appearance, swamped by the clothes that used to fit. His words cut off into the heart-wrenching sobs of a frightened child, but before either Sam or Dean could figure out how to react, the angel vanished with the familiar rustle of feathers, leaving a rumpled puddle of clothes and trench coat on the floor.

"Son of a . . . " Dean swore.

The sound of rustling feathers drew their attention to the hall they'd entered from. There, sitting in the center of the entryway, was Cas, completely naked. He was still crying and now staring at his hands as if confused. Bluish light began to stream from his body and ear-piercing screech filled the air, forcing both hunters to duck and cover their ears.

"What the hell?" Sam demanded.

Dean, unable to hear, recognized the query and mouthed, "Cas. True voice."

Abruptly the noise stopped, the light vanished, and Cas's tiny body collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

"Shit. Did he just?"

"Yeah," Dean replied, pushing shakily to his feet. "I think he just hightailed it out of his vessel."

"Did it seem like he was in his right mind and aware of the situation?"

"No, Sammy, it did not."

Dean gathered the clothes and he and Sam jogged cautiously toward the naked toddler. He was sprawled on his side, eyes wide open and eerily blank, utterly still, like a discarded doll. Sam crouched and pressed a shaking hand to the little throat. A hand that was bigger than Cas's entire skull now.

He shook his head. "We gotta take hi- his vessel with us. See if we can find a way to track down a potentially crazed angel outside his vessel."

"What the hell did those freaks do to him?" Dean muttered more to himself than in expectation of an answer.

"You get him," Sam said, pushing to his feet. "I'll gather up whatever they were using so we can try to figure this out."

Dean simply nodded, then knelt beside his shrunken, well, the vessel of his shrunken friend. Had this deaging of the vessel forced Cas out? Both he and Sam would have said yes to be a temporary meatsuit. No need to fly off. But then, he'd seemed confused and in pain. Maybe once he started feeling better he'd come back.

Using the dress shirt, Dean swaddled the toddler and tied the sleeves to hold it all in place. He then gently slid the lids closed so he looked more asleep than dead. He then scooped the boy into his arms. Jesus, he was half the size of Ben and seemed to weigh less than his gun. Adjusting him so his head lay against Dean's chest instead of flopping lifelessly back, Dean carried him to the Impala and buckled him into the back seat.

Sam clomped up, staring at Cas before shaking himself and stowing all the books and supplies in the trunk. "This was all I could find. Hopefully, something can tell us what they did and how to fix it."

Dean just nodded and climbed behind the wheel. They drove in tense silence to their motel the next town over. Fortunately, they'd paid ahead a few days and still had a room to return to. Once again, Sam carried their spoils while Dean carried Cas. He placed the lifeless body on his bed, head cushioned on the pillow as if he were merely asleep.

He and Sam stared down at him, still in shock. "What do we do, Dean?"

"_You_ bozos? Nothing. But you can start by telling little old me how my baby bro became my _baby_ bro."

Both hunters jumped at the unexpected voice and whirled, hands going for weapons, to find the short, cocky trickster scowling at them around a sucker.

"Gabe!" Sam sounded relieved even as Dean made the name sound like a curse.

The archangel turned trickster appeared his usual snarky self except for how stiffly he stood, as if something on his back were affecting his balance.

"So there I was, becoming Biblically familiar with these two beautiful actresses, when I've suddenly got a sibling glommed onto to my glorious wings. Talk about a mood killer! These bad boys weren't meant for nursing fledglings, which shouldn't be possible given that Dad hasn't popped out another batch since dear Castiel's. Then I recognized the munchkin and realized you two mutton heads must have gotten into some mess. So tell me. How. Did. This. Happen?"

"Oh, thank god, you've seen Cas," Sam gushed. "We had no idea how we were gonna find him."

"Sam!" Dean cut in harshly. He moved subtly to stand between the tiny body on the bed and Gabriel. It was the wrong move because Gabe immediately peered around Dean at the bed and his eyes widened in surprise.

"His vessel shrank, too?"

At the same time Dean barked, "You saying Cas's true form is a baby, too?"

They glared at one another, then Dean carried on. "And what do you mean nursing? And where is he?"

Gabriel sighed and moved to sit on the bed beside the empty vessel. "How about you tell me what happened?"

Dean grit his teeth, but Sam jumped in with a quick run down of their disastrous hunt.

"Now, you know, so tell us where's Cas?"

Gabriel smirked. "He's right here, Deano. Curled up in my wings. It makes sense now. Cassie cut off from heaven as a full-fledged angel is tough enough, but a growing fledgling can't survive. They need to be sustained by the grace of the adult angels until they're old enough. To put it bluntly, whatever those witches did turned Cas into a baby angel with the needs, instincts and mentality of an infant angel. Starving and alone he sought out the only source of grace he could find, yours truly."

"I thought you were hidden from angels?" Dean pressed.

"Yeah, but not from fledglings. No angel can hide from the needs of a fledgling; it keeps one or two from being overlooked and abandoned when there are thousands of little ones in a batch."

Sam and Dean shared a look, Dean's incredulous while Sam's was fascinated.

"All right, you, that's enough for now." Gabriel had reached around to the empty air behind his back. There was a rustling of feathers and a glimmer of light. "You gotta go back in the vessel while we're here on earth. We can't let Sammyo and Deano, here, get out of diaper duty since they're the ones who got you into this mess in the first place."

The light flickered and an ear-splitting screech had Sam and Dean cringing. Gabe glanced at them. "You might want to wait outside. This could get crispy for mortals."

From the parking lot, Sam and Dean watched the pyrotechnics worthy of a feature film flare through their windows. Once it went dark and quiet, they ventured back inside.

Gabe sat on the bed still, only now the tiny, black-haired, blue-eyed one-year-old perched on one leg, held upright by Gabe's hands on his back and belly. The tell-tale padding of a diaper filled out the bottom of a white onesie that proclaimed Cas to be "Daddy's Lil' Angel" on the front with a pair of fluffy black wings printed on the back. Cas had a hand in his mouth, chewing and slobbering around the chubby digits, but once he saw Dean he kicked his legs wildly and held out both arms as far as he could reach. He gave a nasally huff, opened and closed his hands and pronounced, "De!" in the softest, most adorable little voice.

He wriggled until Gabe let him slide off his leg. Cas clung to the jeans until his feet hit the carpet, then he turned and walked toward Dean. Well, tried. He made it a few stumbling steps then dropped onto his diaper. Cas stared up at them, eyes wide with shock, as if he couldn't believe that had happened, then he vanished and reappeared against Dean's chest. Only hunter's reflexes allowed the man to throw his arms around the baby and prevented Cas from dropping from that more considerable height.

Cas turned to Gabe and pawed at Dean's face. The archangel wrinkled his nose, though he couldn't hide how enamored he was with his little brother and said, "Yes, yes. Pretty. I know."

Then Cas's little hand touched his chest and Dean felt a tug somewhere deep inside.

"Whoa! No, Cas!" Gabriel barked and leapt up to scoop his brother back into his arms and away from Dean.

Dean swayed and would have fallen if Sam hadn't steadied him. "What the hell?"

Cas looked closed to tears as Gabriel softly chided him in a lilting musical language neither hunter had heard before but knew instinctively to be Enochian. Cas uttered a few mournful syllables back at the archangel, then turned blue eyes brimming with tears on Dean.

Gabriel pulled the little boy protectively against his chest as he looked warily up at Sam. "He didn't mean any harm."

Sam helped Dean to a chair and both turned expectant glares on the archangel. "He was just enamored with the brightness of your soul and tried to interact with it the way he would with an adult angel."

Sam was a lot quicker on the uptake than his brother. A smile twitched the corners of his lips. "Are you saying he was doing the angel equivalent of trying to nurse from Dean?"

"Whoa, say what now?" Dean exclaimed.

Cas, it seemed had bored of the conversation, and flopped back with the confidence of the extremely young that he would be held and curled his body toward Gabriel. The archangel adjusted his hold until the little angel was carefully cradled and absently stroked his fingers through the air at Cas's back. When Cas stretched, yawned and nuzzled closer to his brother, they realized Gabriel must be stroking his wings.

"Basically, yeah," Gabriel admitted, then he playfully tickled the tiny angel's tummy. "Guess I need to make sure he's topped off before handing him over."

Dean made a face. "Ew, gross, dude, are you like nursing him now?"

Sam flashed him a bitchface, while Gabriel rolled his eyes. He snapped and a bottle full of glowing light appeared in his hand. He stuck the nipple into Cas's mouth so abruptly it startled a little yelp from the baby angel, but Cas quickly realized what it was and began to suckle contentedly.

"There, is that better for your delicate sensibilities, Deano?"

"Not really," Dean griped. "My best friend grown-ass angel of the Lord is chowing down on a frickin' bottle." He slapped his thighs, wiped his palms on the denim and slouched back in the chair. "So, how do we fix this mess and get back our nerdy angel?"

"_We_ don't do anything." Gabriel stood, lightly bouncing the baby angel in his arms. "_I_'m gonna take a looksie through what those witches were up to, and _you two_ are gonna earn your babysitting badges."

That got Dean to his feet. "Wait a minute—"

"Dean—" Sam started, but Castiel cut them both off with an abrupt burble and squeal. Gazes dropped to the toddler, who'd finished the bottle and was now swatting at his brother's chin with his free hand.

"Okay, little bird, you go play with your humans…" Gabriel hefted his brother to Sam and Dean. "…and I'll see about getting you back into that trench coat."

The archangel let go before either hunter had hold of the toddler, but both lunged forward—Dean catching him under the arms, Sam by the puffy, diapered butt.

Gabriel smirked and snapped his fingers. A playpen filled with baby toys appeared in the room's corner. "I'll leave you guys to it."

"Wait—" Sam let Dean take all of Castiel's weight and reached for the archangel as if that would have stopped him. Gabriel vanished, along with all the items retrieved from the witches.

"Damn it!" Dean swore, still holding Castiel by his armpits.

Sam glared at his brother and gestured at the dangling toddler.

"What? Not like he's gonna repeat it." Dean lifted the angel so he could look him in the eye. Castiel stared back at him. "Are you?"

Castiel grinned and grabbed his nose. The stubby fingers slipped and caught on Dean's lips. Dean couldn't help the first twitches of a smile. Sam bent over the playpen and pulled out an armful of stuffed toys, which he tossed onto Dean's bed.

"Hey!"

Sam ignored him and finished clearing the remaining items—blankets, a few changes of clothes along with wipes, diapers and a cooler. A peek inside revealed a good stock of the glowing, grace-filled bottles.

"Just how long is he expecting this to take?" Sam picked up the pack of diapers and glanced back at the other two. "And I really hope we're not gonna have to use these."

Before Dean could offer a snide reply, Castiel squirmed in his arms, face scrunching in a way Dean would die before admitting was adorable, and sneezed. A cute, kittenish sneeze.

Two things happened. First, Castiel looked at Dean with the most shocked, startled expression he'd ever seen—and that was including the time Sam had walked in on him and that stripper. And then the bulbs in the lamps exploded.

The brothers remained frozen in the darkness for a few seconds until Sam turned on the bathroom light and pulled back the curtains to let in daylight. They both stared at Castiel, who simply hung limp in Dean's awkward hold and stared back.

"Well, bless you," Dean said. "And I don't even want to know what happens if you fart."

"Dean!"

He shot Sam an "I'm adorable" grin. "He fills this diaper, you're dealing with the consequences."

"I doubt he's going to need that. He only eats grace. This is probably Gabriel's way of screwing with us."

"I don't doubt that, but if he drops a deuce—not it!" Dean sank onto the edge of the bed and set Castiel on his thigh. He ran a hand over the soft, baby hair, causing the toddler to peer up at him. "I guess we'll just chill and catch up on Dr. Sexy while we wait for that douche to show up again."

He stretched over the bed to retrieve the remote from the nightstand. Castiel sneezed again. Dean and Sam froze, then warily checked the room for what had blown that time.

"Holy crap!" Sam exclaimed, to which Dean immediately responded, "You better hope not. You're the one changing him, remember?"

"No, Dean, look."

Dean followed his brother's gaze to the little angel, who sat calmly on Dean's leg and was busy inspecting the button's on Dean's flannel. It took him a second to notice, then he nearly dropped the kid. Fluffy, black wings sprouted from those tiny little shoulder blades, like a real-life, 3D projection of the pair printed on his onesie. They twitched once, twice, then settled flat against his back. Sam dropped onto the bed next to them. They each ran a finger over the downy softness.

"They're real!" Sam's voice was reverent. Dean could see the puppyish twelve-year-old shining through, and knew he wasn't feeling much different. These wings, albeit much larger and less fluffy, had carried him out of hell. And now he was touching them.

Cas let out a happy snuffle and slumped across Dean's other leg until his little head rested on Sam's—a luxuriating cat sunning itself. Or, rather, an angel shamelessly begging for petting. He flicked his wings and made a grumble-grunt.

Dean grinned and met his brother's gaze. Both resumed stroking the downy feathers. "Bossy little guy, huh? Who knew our bad-ass angel of the Lord wuvs cuddles?"

Sam smirked. "Dare you to say that to his face once he's back to normal."

By silent consensus, the brothers shifted around so both could sit comfortably against the headboard and turned the TV on low while they gave in to the toddler's demand for affection. Sam even pulled a couple of the stuffed toys close enough for the angel to play with. To no one's surprise, a chubby honeybee, with a stitched-on smile and velvet wings, was pulled into the position of honor beneath Cas's chin. The wing stroking must have been just as soothing to the hunters because soon both brothers were snoring softly, heads tilted back at uncomfortable angles.

Which was how Gabriel found them when he returned an hour later. He put his hands on his hips and mock glared at his little brother, who didn't so much as twitch from his spoiled position on the laps of his two favorite humans.

"And they say I'm the trickster. Even baby-fied you're looking after those two. Making sure they rest." Those fluffy black wings twitched and big, blue eyes gazed up at him with heart-breaking innocence. Gabriel walked over and swept his own hand along the feathers, drawing a pleased trill from the baby angel. "And if you happened to get a wing-petting in the bargain…."

The archangel whipped out a cell phone and took a few photos. "Blackmail." He explained while he worked. Then he sent copies to Castiel's phone and stroked his brothers wings again. "And a gift for the coolest of my baby bros. I don't know what you see in those knuckleheads. But they are lucky to have you. And they better not forget it."

Again, Castiel did nothing but stare cutely up at him.

Gabriel sighed. "I figured out what those witches did—screwed with your wavelength, got you moving along the wrong frequencies. Still don't know why, but you'll be straightened out and back to your old self in a couple hours."

He stretched his wings to fly off, but Castiel stopped him with a soft whimper and extended a hand to him.

"You, too, kiddo, but you won't want to come with me once you're all unscrambled." Gabriel groaned and snapped up an overstuffed chair and dropped into it. "Fine. Just for a little while, though."

Cas's expression was smug as a baby's could be as he appeared in his brother's arms and curled close. "Yeah, yeah, cool it, little bro. I'm only staying for a few minutes."

Dean startled himself awake with a particularly loud snore. He shoved up, wiping drool from his chin, and shoved Sam's giant head off his shoulder. His lap was oddly cool, but it took a few seconds for him to realize why that was wrong.

"Cas!"

His gaze darted around the room and landed on a garishly plush armchair that hadn't been there before. His smile turned wicked when he noticed the archangel sprawled on it, mouth open and snoring, and a much smaller, cuter angel snuggled contentedly against his brother's chest. Dean nearly elbowed Sam in the head as he scrambled for his phone.

"Whaddya doin'?" Sam sleepily demanded.

"Blackmail, Sammy." Dean shamelessly snapped photos. "I'm getting blackmail on an archangel."

"Nice try, Deano." There was a snap and Dean's phone chimed.

The hunter opened a message from casaeroticanumerouno, a contact he knew had not previously existed on his phone, and looked at the photo he'd just received.

"Son of a bitch!"


End file.
